Voting with their feet

Immigration legislation proved impossible to pass last Congress but is coming back again with a much better chance of reaching the president’s desk and being signed into law.

The stumbling block last time was the nearly absolute disagreement between the two congressional chambers. They enacted a bill pouring money into beefing up the nation’s southern border, but could not hammer out a deal on actual people — the immigrants themselves.

Senators of both parties wanted a guest-worker program, as did President Bush, arguing that 11 million or more illegal immigrants could not be deported. They needed a path to legality, whether merely as temporary workers or, eventually, as American citizens.

In the House, Republicans argued that this amounted to amnesty and a reward for lawbreakers who jumped the immigration queue. A combination of amnesty and tougher enforcement had in theory been tried before, they added, but while the amnesty actually happened, the enforcement never did.

As the election approached, Republicans ramped up their opposition to a guest-worker program, appealing to the concerns of a substantial proportion of their base. The ejection of the GOP from the majority in both chambers in November cannot be characterized as a national repudiation of its immigration policies — the Democratic victory was based on a wide range of public discontents with the party in power — but it has certainly changed the immigration picture.

Immigration legislation involving a guest-worker program and eventual citizenship is central to the Kennedy-McCain bill that is likely to be introduced next week or the one after that. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants a floor vote in April, so the House has plenty of time to wrestle with it before the summer recess, after which (it is generally recognized) presidential politics will so overshadow congressional proceedings that little substantive legislation is likely to get done.

The details of the bill are not generally known because the authors, Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), have kept their discussions closed. This has caused some concern to outside groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce, and has raised questions about whether the bill would include, for example, a prevailing wage standard to make it more palatable to labor unions.

But the knottiest issue is, again, the question of amnesty. The authors deny that their bill offers amnesty, but many of their colleagues are not convinced. The doubters include many Democrats, such as Rep. Bill Pascrell (N.J.), who has made it plain he would not have voted for Kennedy-McCain in the form it took in the 109th Congress.

Still, the drift of events is plain enough, and encouraging to legions of immigrants seeking ex post facto legitimacy. Candidates (both congressional and, particularly, presidential) will have to weigh their positions, because no bigger piece of legislation is likely to get through Congress this cycle.